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Al Qaida magazine celebrates Boston bombings

Remains of a pressure cooker believed to be used as a bomb that exploded during the Boston Marathon.

By John Hudson, Foreign Policy

Posted May 31, 2013, at 11:57 a.m.

Excerpts of the 11th issue of Inspire magazine, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula’s propaganda rag, has leaked to the web, and focus extensively on the April 15 bombing of the Boston Marathon.

According to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), which monitors jihadi web forums, the latest issue leaked when Yemeni journalist Abd al-Razzaq Al-Jamal posted excerpts of the issue to his Facebook page. The images of the issue were provided to FP by the institute.

One image is a composite of the bloody scene of the Boston bombing alongside AQAP’s military commander Qassem al-Rimi. It reads:

Oh American people, your security will not be attained by denying security to other peoples, attacking them or oppressing them. Your security is in the hands of the fools among you who rule you with oppression and aggression. Know that oppression and aggression come back upon the heads of those who use them . . .

According to the Research Institute, “Al-Rimi also threatens the American people that the Boston bombings, the poisoned letters sent to the White House and two U.S. senators, and other events — regardless of who is behind them — ‘prove that your security has lapsed and that the attacks against you are taking a course that nobody can control. . . . [So] save yourselves if you care for your own skin.’ ”

Unusually, the issue still appears in Arabic. As readers know, the notoriety of Inspire, once dubbed the “Vanity Fair of terrorism,” is largely due to its wide availability in English. The online magazine gained new prominence after the Boston bombings when Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told investigators that he and his brother Tamerlan read the periodical’s instructions on building bombs before the attack, according to law enforcement officials speaking to NBC News. On two separate occasions, the magazine published articles on bomb building using kitchen pressure cookers, the type of weapon used in the attack.